Led by a group of Barack Obama campaign alums and veterans of Democratic politics and the business world, the organization is kicking off with a $1 million prototype effort to play in races for Virginia’s House of Delegates this year. | Steffi Loos/Getty Images

Democrats launch super PAC to win back statehouses

Democrats have been throttled by Republicans in the all-important battle for state legislative chambers the past decade. Now they're trying to turn the tide with the launch of a new super PAC.

Aiming to play a similar role as Senate Majority PAC does for Senate races and House Majority PAC does for House races, Forward Majority is launching this week as a vehicle for winning back state legislatures ahead of the next round of redistricting in 2021.

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Led by a group of Barack Obama campaign alums and veterans of Democratic politics and the business world, the organization is kicking off with a $1 million prototype effort to play in races for Virginia’s House of Delegates this year. It's aiming to raise up to $100 million to win back legislative bodies in 12 states over the next four years, according to plans shared with POLITICO.

Democrats have lost roughly 1,000 legislative seats and 27 chambers since 2008.

Forward Majority’s model includes targeting more races than most local parties or state caucuses are likely to touch. The goal is to flip chambers from GOP hands to Democratic control by using the kinds of expensive campaign tactics seldom used in such local races, including polling and message testing.

The group was founded by executive director David Cohen, a top Obama 2008 official who managed the then-candidate’s national mail program after leading his primary campaigns in multiple states, and chief operating officer Vicky Hausman, a longtime strategist at Dalberg. Its debut comes as Democrats struggle to chart a path forward from the down-ballot destruction of the past decade.

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National Republicans have poured money into state legislative races for years. But Democrats have only recently put national political muscle behind such an effort, with Obama endorsing the new National Democratic Redistricting Committee led by former Attorney General Eric Holder.

Forward Majority’s leaders are in touch with the NDRC, which they view as a central clearinghouse for the party’s strategy before the looming redistricting round that could reshape congressional districts in their targeted states.

Forward Majority’s campaigns director is Ethan Roeder, Obama’s 2008 and 2012 data director, and its polling and analytics director is longtime political and corporate operative Saul Shemesh. It is launching with support from a trio of honorary co-chairs: Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Massachusetts Reps. Joe Kennedy III and Seth Moulton.

“There’s a big gap in Democratic infrastructure — a big, gaping hole that is really at the heart of so many of the failures that we’ve seen, because state legislatures that don’t always get so much press are, in fact, the foundational layer of so much of the party’s infrastructure,” said Cohen, who has been working to build the group since December. “It’s where we build our bench, it’s the laboratory for policies, it underpins so much of what we as a party need to do.”

Warning that Democrats risk falling into a massive electoral hole until at least the post-2030 redistricting round if they don’t act now to take legislatures, the group intends to focus on states that are the most gerrymandered. It will target its investments to where winning chambers would be most efficient and where controlling them could have the biggest effect on gaining seats in the U.S. House.

In Virginia, Forward Majority plans to roll out a get-out-the-vote program in 15 local races — and a more comprehensive effort to win voters in three contests — beyond those that the state caucus is targeting. The goal is to flip the body’s party control instead of just securing incremental gains for Democrats.

There, the group expects to target districts that look like ones it'll need to win in the rest of the country. It wants to then apply the lessons of 2017 as it aims to flip from six to eight chambers in both 2018 and 2020 — an effort that the leaders estimate will involve touching around 130 state House races and 60 state Senate races.

On the ground, they will support candidates with digital, social, SMS, and mail messaging as well as canvassing and polling, said Hausman.

“The starting point is to do what we know works at the national level,” explained Cohen. “What often would be considered Campaign 101 for a congressional campaign doesn’t make its way down to a state legislative race.”

In addition to the full-time staff, the organizers expect to rely on a wide range of advisers, including Susan McCue, the former chief of staff to Harry Reid who helped found the Senate Majority PAC; former John Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan; former Bernie Sanders deputy campaign manager Rich Pelletier; and former Hillary Clinton deputy communications director Christina Reynolds.